Homeschooling in a small house ~ part 3 ~ Using & storing visual aids

I love visual aids – maps, posters, charts – you name it, I love it.  I believe most children need them too.  They need concrete pictures to attach their thoughts to especially if they are not at the abstract level of thinking. 

But as much as I love them, I do not want them cluttering my home.  If I had a school room, there would be no need to write this post.  I would gladly stick every aid to the walls and maybe even to the ceiling. ;0)  But since that’s not an option right now, I’ve had to find other ways to achieve the same results. 

I searched my house for wall space that was available but not in everyday plain view.  And I came up with the hall.  The hall all ready serves as our library and homeschool storage so why not be our bulletin board too!

As we need the posters, I will take the poster down (I use sticky tack so that it will easily go off & on) and take it to our school area.  An added bonus is that the kids have to walk through the hall everyday on their ways to their rooms & the restroom.  It is not unusual for someone to stop and sing the ABC’s or read the maps.  How I love that!

Sunshine Girl’s ABC wall is also in the hall.  Every week we add her completed letter to the wall as we sing the ABC’s.  She loves to see her progress as the wall fills up with letters. 

My hall will not hold all of the visual aids that the children need so each child also has an office folder.  It is just a binder that contains various learning helps and a calendar.  At the beginning of each month, we print out a blank calendar from Donna Young and fill it in.  We place it in our folders to refer to as needed.  I also have a large school calendar behind a door but we don’t keep up with it as well.

One day, I’ll do a post on our office folders with links to some of the places where I’ve gotten the charts.  If you’re interested in them, just google “office folders” and you should come up with some links to get you started.

Actually, here is a link to get you started.  Lots of information there. 

I also keep a dry erase board on the wall in the living room.  It is in a very awkward place for me to write on it but I haven’t found a better place.  I keep a smaller board tucked away by our homeschool shelves and pull it out to use when working with someone.  I made sure that I could easily take this board down if someone was coming over.  But sometimes I just leave it up and write a nice little message on it. 

So there’s how we use visual aids in a small space.  It just takes a little thinking outside of the box.  I’m not sure what my next post in this series will be.  I may talk about our storage or I may talk about our adaptation of the workbox organization approach. 

Part 1 here

Part 2 here